Troy Kokol admits that his initial success may have given him a bit of a skewed view of the music industry.

The Calgary singer-songwriter and producer thought he would give songwriting a try more than a decade ago. He teamed up with his wife, Joni Delaurier, a singer-songwriter with much more experience working the craft.

Their first song? Pick Up Truck, a breezy bittersweet number that turned into a hit single by Hobbema country artist Shane Yellowbird, who released it as a single from his 2006 debut record Life is Calling My Name.

“It was like: ‘Oh, OK, this songwriting thing is easy,’ says Kokol. “It’s actually the antithesis of that. Usually people take years and the songs sit on the shelves for years and they pitch it to a million people. The way we came into it was super serendipitous. The chances of that happening — we didn’t know it at the time, especially me — were astronomically impossibly. Looking back, it was a minor miracle for us.”

Since then, the Metis songwriter has written or co-written more than 200 songs. Brett Kissel, Tenille Townes, Leaving Thomas and Don Amero are just a few who have recorded them. But in between these triumphs, Kokol admits there was a steep learning curve.

“My wife had and has a lot more experience that I do, especially at the time,” he says with a laugh. “So I had to spend the next five to eight years learning the business and the craft and even the genre, because I was not familiar with country music.”

If anything, it gave Kokol a fairly practical view when it came to the songwriting side of the business, particularly when it comes to radio-approved mainstream country. He sits on the board of the Songwriter’s Association of Canada, has picked up a SOCAN award for his country songwriting and has twice been nominated for Canadian Country Music Award’s Songwriter of the Year.

But when it came to writing and producing his own music, which began with his 2009 debut Lost in a Metaphor and continued with last year’s The Lonely Ghost, Kokol did his best to spread his wings creatively.

“One thing about the commercial country world, or commercial pop or any type of commercial music, it tends to push you in a less-creative direction sometimes,” he says. “Especially when you are writing for other people. You have labels talking about demographics and beats-per-minute and timing the seconds of the intro, just all this stuff that is anti-creative and flies in the face of anything awesome. So it’s a weird sort of balancing act that you have to play.”

Which is not to say The Lonely Ghost is challenging, avant-garde music. Singles such as Jim Cuddy, a playful tune about a man losing his wife to the charms of the Blue Rodeo singer (Kokol assures us that Cuddy has heard the tune and approves), or freshly released single Lightbulb, would not sound out-of-place on a radio station that plays catchy folk-pop.

In fact, while certainly artistic statements, both of Kokol’s records also served practical purposes. He sees both as providing valuable experience in recording, producing and mixing. Alongside his work writing songs for other people, Kokol has also opened his home studio up to country peers such as Brad Saunders and Beamer Wigley.

To further spread his wings, the video for Lightbulb, which came out earlier this week, is a endearing stop-motion animation tale that Kokol created.

Raised in Red Deer, Kokol grew up in a musical household, even if he didn’t consider it a career path early on. His mother had a similarly practical approach to music, playing the bar scene as a way to earn money.

Lonely Ghost picked up a nomination for best folk album at the Indigenous Music Awards, ultimately losing to Buffy Saint Marie’s Medicine Songs. Kokol said, as a youth, he rarely embraced his Indigenous background, often associating it with family members who suffered from addiction problems or were involved in gang life.

“As a kid growing up in Red Deer, I thought ‘Man, I need to get away from this,’ ” he says. “So I really abandoned my whole aboriginal culture almost completely.”

Still, he figured submitting for an Indigenous Music Award would boost his profile. It ended up providing so much more, including a path forward.

“When I went there and heard the music, every single person who was there doing their thing was really all about trying to have a message of empowerment and a message of healing,” he says. “I realized I had been missing out on opportunities to learn and to grow, not only creatively but as a human being. Why am I denying who I am and not giving this culture a chance? It was pretty eye-opening for me and inspiring.”